Abbey IP
Extension throughout our curriculum
The Abbey’s DNA is all about extension and challenge: active exploration, not passive learning, going far beyond the requirements of any syllabus. You will see challenge in every lesson and girls embracing this.
Each year group has dedicated time to take ownership of their own learning through ‘Love of Learning’ sessions. Learning is presented every half term in assembly and LIII put on an exhibition at the end of the year to showcase all they have achieved.
Senior School subject experts teach and deliver core subjects and/or work with junior school teachers to ensure a seamless transition to The Abbey Senior School and academic challenge and rigour.
Specialist Senior School preparation
As part of our wide-ranging education, we offer specialist support for 11+ processes, including entrance to The Abbey Senior School.
All of our curriculum, from English and Maths to specialist teaching, is brilliant preparation for the best secondary schools in the area. We start to give families bespoke and individual guidance from Upper I (Year 4), sharing useful data to give an in-depth sense of each pupil’s progress and the type of environment that is likely to suit them best. The majority of pupils progress onto the Senior School, but there is no one right secondary environment: it is about what is right for each child.
As part of this guidance, we offer free specialised after-school support for 11+ assessment from Upper I into Upper II (Years 4-5). This is carefully judged to prevent preparation taking up valuable curriculum time – it is only one narrow skill, and children need to learn so much more, on a much bigger canvas, during the school day. However, it also supports families who want to prepare, so that they don’t have to pay for expensive private sessions at weekends and in the school holidays that disrupt the experience, and the play, of childhood.
How it works
All students in Upper I – Upper II (Years 4-5) have the option to sign up for a 90-minute after-school support session once a week. Our own staff oversee the programme and train group leaders, each of whom work with very small groups of Junior School students.
Group leaders are older Abbey students, Sixth Formers and recent alumnae. They are academic high-fliers and scholarship holders who went through the 11+ process themselves and know exactly what it takes to succeed in it. They are also close enough in age to Junior School students to build a strong rapport with them. Their skills will be supplemented by our teaching staff.
Abbey students make brilliant group leaders. They are remarkable young people, and we see that in a host of ways: the interview shortlist for Head Girl, for example, is routinely the highest calibre group that any of us have ever interviewed. They are perfectly placed to help deliver the support younger students need, under the guidance of our teachers. The young people who go through the programme will then have the opportunity to apply to be group leaders themselves in a few years’ time!
